As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2013 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Click here to read other blog posts in this series.

We've been saying for years that copyright law is broken. 2013 saw the beginning of what could be a meaningful effort to fix it – if Internet users pay attention and stay involved.

Last week, facing pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, the major wireless carriers promised to unlock mobile devices so that they can be used on other carriers' networks when the customer's contract has expired. This follows the outcry early this year over the Library of Congress's decision to remove legal protection against Digital Millennium Copyright Act suits for people who unlock their devices to change carriers.

In Lenz v. Universal Music Group – aka the dancing baby case – EFF and co-counsel Keker & Van Nest, LLP have waged a long battle on behalf of homemaker Stephanie Lenz to ensure that Internet users have protection from unfounded claims of copyright infringement. Today, a broad array of third parties joined the fray, and we couldn’t be more pleased to have their support.

For several weeks now, former Navy chaplain and Colorado Assembly candidate Gordon Klingenschmitt has been on a campaign to shut down the YouTube account of People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch (“RWW”) project. RWW reports and comments on the political views of folks like Klingenschmitt, using their own words. As we all learned in Writing 101: show, don’t tell.

Klingenschmitt apparently doesn’t appreciate the criticism those clips engender, so he’s been using false copyright claims to get them taken down. Now, with help from EFF and Hogan Lovells, PFAW is fighting back, demanding that Klingenschmitt end his campaign.

Stephanie Lenz’s effort to hold Universal Music Group accountable for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to take down a home video of her toddler “dancing” to Prince in the kitchen is one step closer to fruition. Today, EFF and co-counsel Keker & Van Nest LLP filed an opening brief on behalf of Ms. Lenz in the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. And, as we explain in the brief, the case concerns whether Internet users—from Ms. Lenz to remix artists to scholars to documentary filmmakers—have any real protection against wrongful accusations of copyright infringement.